It’s Started

It used to be teachers left traditional public schools to start their own charter schools. That’s how KIPP started, along with other high-performing, and low-performing for that matter, charters across the country. Classroom teachers, who became fed up with the dysfunctional, inequitable places called public schools, left the traditional system and created new learning organizations. And it would be fair to say the charter school movement made a difference, but not a big enough difference to tip the traditional school system toward true reform.

Now there is a new movement happening within the traditional school system. Traditional classroom teachers transforming themselves into education entrepreneurs, taking their creativity and ingenuity to hybrid schools and microschools – and taking their students with them.

Chelsea Waite, an EducationWeek online reporter, provides the details in an article titled “Teachers Want to Innovate. Schools that Don’t Let Them Are Losing Out:”

“At the end of April, I attended a conference in Atlanta featuring a small but heterogeneous group of self-described education entrepreneurs. It was the second year of the National Hybrid Schools Conference, which launched in 2022 to connect people involved in less conventional styles of schooling that have exploded in interest since the pandemic. I was there because a thread of my current research is focused on innovations in education happening outside of traditional districts.”

“During a break after one session, I struck up a conversation with another attendee, a longtime educator with special ed expertise. She as a black woman working in a rural public district two hours outside of Atlanta, and she told me how discouraged she felt by the way districts treat families of color with children who have special needs. She was frustrated about the constraints placed on her as a teacher – she couldn’t hug a student who was crying, for example, presumably because of rules around touch and safety.”

“So she is starting her own microschool. It will launch this fall. She’s working with a few families, all black, who are eager for a different and more affirming experience for their young learners.”

“As I walked to my next session, I couldn’t get something out of my head: This teacher has a thousand burdens, and she isn’t responding by finding ways to work less. She’s taking on more work by starting her own school, an endeavor that one of the conference’s main-stage panelists described as ‘brutal’ in the first year. In a sector where ‘overburdened’ may be the most frequently used term to describe teachers, this educator and many of her peers (fellow teachers as well as parents) at the conference were not trying to step back. They were leaping forward, taking on new challenges.”

“I believe in public education, for all its faults. But I also think there are incredible resources in public school systems that are going to waste – including the intellectual capital of inventive educators and community members who want to pursue new ideas. Look no further than the teacher I met, feeling like the best way to serve her students was to leave – and to take some of them with her.”

“Public schools need to reckon with the opportunities they’re losing if there aren’t channels inside the system to encourage creativity, ingenuity and entrepreneurship from teachers, parents and even students.”

“…In most school systems, teachers and parents are often expected to sit back and wait for instructions, not encouraged to generate and try new ideas. ‘Change’ means nothing more than a new math curriculum. Charter school authorizers invite new ideas in theory, but then often stall their development with hundreds of pages of requirements and legalese.”

“I’m worried there’s a brain drain in public education that’s been accelerated by the pandemic and divisive politics. And I don’t just mean that superintendents are quitting. The parents and teachers opting out of public schools aren’t just leaving jobs vacant and reducing districts’ enrollment dollars. Some of them are walking away with good ideas for how schools can be more responsive to students’ varied needs. Some of them have especially good ideas for how to better meet the needs of underserved communities that are tired of being told to wait while someone else figures it out.”

“If public schools, charter authorizers and charter management organizations are willing to embrace creative solutions form teachers and the community, there are ways to do it: State and local leaders can encourage pods and microschools, partner with community organizations to create learning hubs, allow for autonomous district schools or enable parent-teacher compacts.”

“So, fellow believers in public education: If the cost of retaining education entrepreneurs is to give life to their ideas, what is there to lose?”

I don’t know if I believe in the public education Waites refers to. I’ve written before about a concept called “public schooling.” Public schooling is different from our present definition of public schools because “schooling” believes learning can happen anytime and anywhere – not just at a place called school.

I’m also skeptical that Waites is right when she thinks the traditional school system is interested in embracing inventions like pods and microschools. My experience with the traditional system is that they like to do things the way they like to do them. “Different” isn’t an embraceable concept in most school districts.

But, once the traditional system starts to lose considerable market share to pods and microschools, you will see school districts try to convince all of those pod and microschool entrepreneurs that they can do what they want to do while part of their traditional district. Those entrepreneurs need to understand that the traditional system can’t help them – the traditional system just isn’t built that way.

No, I think it’s better for these pods and microschools to launch, grow, and prosper separate from the traditional system. That way, relationships can be built, skills can improve, and young learners will feel valued and rewarded in learning how to become their own life-long learner.

It’s started.

Til tomorrow. SVB